and the roses are wilting
by Emporia Nexus
Summary: I've got enough guilt to start my own religion. — or, a story on how (not) to cope with grief. Sasuke-centric, post-war, canon divergent.


**title:** and the roses are wilting  
 **summary:** I've got enough guilt to start my own religion. — or, a story on how (not) to cope with grief. Sasuke-centric, post-war, canon divergent.  
 **note:** this is vastly different from where it began when I started working on it two weeks ago. hell, it's different from how it was in my head when I scraped the entire original and began from scratch six days ago. but I'm content, even if it's not how I wanted it at first. so, here it is, for you fine folks: the last installment of the _mourning flowers_ series.

* * *

Sakura punches a god, and Sasuke is mildly impressed. Naruto _hollers_ , and he momentarily wishes she would punch the blond, too.

 _I really have to do something about these passive-aggressive urges._

Not many people can say they cracked the skull of the world's second maker like they were just going about setting the breakfast table, but then again, she's not just anyone. Years' worth of pain is lined along her skin, rooted deep in her muscles; she worked hard for that killer right hook, and he will give credit where it is due.

His feet find the ground again, and there is a moment that stretches longer than it should.

Time has come to a standstill, and a dark thought fleetingly passes through his head: _I could avenge them. Right now, right here, I could avenge them. I could kill everyone responsible for my pain – responsible for_ ** _his_** _pain – and nobody could stop me._

For a solitary, suspended moment in time, his features darken, and his hand reaches for his sword –

Naruto's hand clamps down on his shoulder, then, and time is spinning once more. "We've done it, Sasuke! We've fucking done it, I can't believe it –"

He exhales. The breath comes out shaky.

 _I came so close to killing everyone. God. I really have to do something about these urges._

"Yeah, yeah, I know. Shut up for a minute, Naruto. I need to breathe."

His knees give out under him, and Sasuke plops down unceremoniously. The ground is cold and welcoming, and his eyes come closed of their own accord.

 _Inhale, exhale, repeat._

He feels Naruto sit next to him, big and warm and almost home; the blond is mercifully silent, but he still wounds his arm around Sasuke's sagging shoulders, holding him tight, and he is grateful for all of it.

Tension leaves his body, slowly, and the exhaustion of months he'd gone through on a diet consisting mostly of sheer anger and stale water finally catch up to him.

Sasuke is very, very tired.

He is also very, very glad.

 _Good fucking god, it's finally over._

He opens one eye. Sakura is there, looking at them with a half-chagrined and half-endeared smile on her lips, cheeks flushed and a set of brand new wounds to scar the moment into permanence. Years from now, she'll look at her arm and remember them as they were, kids with nothing to lose except their lives and the precarious bonds they held.

 _I hope you'll smile,_ he thinks, and hates himself a little. _We've made you cry enough as it is._

"Come here," he says, and pats the ground between him and Naruto.

She goes.

* * *

Being back in the village is nothing like what he had thought it would be.

Nobody spits in his general direction, for one, although he's not entirely sure this is not simply because he's, well, _extremely intimidating,_ and a member of Criminals Anonymous to boot.

More so, people seem genuinely happy to see him, at least some of them; three different shinobi come up to him and thank him outright for saving their lives (which he distinctly does not remember doing, so they must have been in the Allied Forces at the time and he Naruto freed everyone from the Tsukuyomi).

In short: it is much better than he expected, if one does not count the gossip that follows him everywhere he goes, from the mart to the pharmacy.

Of course, he does not have that much time outside; almost as soon as he arrives he is whisked off to the hospital for a check-up and then forced to spend a night there and rest for a change. A blissful night of dreamless sleep turns out to have been very much needed, he commends when he's awake again. A lot of the residual tension in his body is gone.

But morning does not come alone; with it also comes something Sasuke expected and very much dreaded.

 _Fucking council_ , he thinks, and cannot help a sneer.

He is whisked into a small, overcrowded room somewhere in the basement levels of the Hokage Tower.

The Konoha Council, the Five Kage, and the Heads of the most important clans of the village (or their representatives, he notes as Hyūga Hinata offers him a small smile, and remembers that her father had been in the bed next to his and sleeping off his injuries just hours before) are all gathered there. Naruto is also present, thankfully, and that at least offers him some semblance of comfort.

He shifts awkwardly in his chair.

"So," he starts. "I'm here because...?"

"Because you're a danger to society, Uchiha," councilor Utatane responds without missing a beat. "Honestly, you should have been executed on the spot –"

"Silence," Tsunade cuts in before the woman can say more. The crease in her brows leaves no room for argument, but the older woman is visibly displeased. "For fuck's sake. He saved the world, and you know it. You _all_ know it. So keep that in mind the next time you open your mouths," she says, the last part explicitly directed at the two councilors. "And don't give me that "he's a threat" bullshit. If he really wanted to kill us, he would've done it when we were defenseless on the battlefield, and then he would've come here and cut your throats."

The tone of that makes Sasuke think she almost regrets he hadn't.

Cut off Mitokado and Utatane's throats, that is.

And he cannot exactly say he does not share her sentiments. "So I'm here to receive my sentence, then."

"In short, yes. I summoned everyone here to reach a consensus regarding what will happen to you, Sasuke. And I wanted you present because I want you to understand our sentiments on the matter."

"Yours, at least, are crystal clear, ma'am."

"Don't sass me, brat," Tsunade says, giving him a halfhearted glare. Then, to the others: "Propositions?"

Silence falls over the room.

Sasuke studies their faces; notes the anxiety Naruto is doing a surprisingly good job of concealing, the tiredness in the Hokage's face, A's this-is-none-of-my-fucking-business-goddammit expression, Utatane's contempt for his entire existence. Nobody seems particularly eager to speak up.

After a while, someone surprising breaks the silence.

"If I may," Hinata begins, her voice soft but steady, "confinement seems like the logical course of action, no? While he _did_ deflect from the village, he did not do anything to warrant lifelong imprisonment. Much less an execution. He did, indeed, attempt to assassinate the Eight-Tails' jinchūriki, but at the time he was acting under external influence –"

"He murdered Danzō," Utatane interjects. "In _cold blood_."

"With all due respect, Lady Koharu," the Hyūga retaliates, "I, for one, do not count what Sasuke did as murder. If someone did to _my_ clan what Lord Danzō did to the Uchiha, they could count themselves lucky if a stab through the heart was all they got in response."

"I second that," Ino adds. "If I had been in Sasuke's position, nothing would've been left of Danzō. Except the eyes, maybe."

"There you have it," Tsunade says. "Hinata, if you would."

"Of course, Lady Hokage. As I was saying, his actions against Killer B weren't entirely his, and, if Lord Raikage and his brother both consent, perhaps we could write that off –"

"Consider it done," A says. "I don't like it one bit, but we do owe the bastard our lives. With this, we're even."

Hinata smiles. "That being said, Sasuke hasn't committed any other major crime, at least to the extent of our knowledge. This leaves a maximum period of a year and seven months of serving time, considering his status prior to deflection, plus a probation period of a maximum two, as stipulated by the Declaration of Law of our country."

"Accent on the maximum," Ino quips.

"What do you suggest?"

"Six months and a one-year probationary period. One or two ANBU should be assigned to keep watch in addition to his probation officer, if that would make the Council more comfortable."

Tsunade considers for a moment, before nodding. "I approve. Shall we vote, then? All those in favor, raise your hands."

Only Utatane hesitates. Faced with an overwhelming majority, she reluctantly puts her hand up.

"It's decided, then. Uchiha Sasuke, you are sentenced to six months of prison, a term you will serve as of today, October 18th. The meeting is adjourned."

 _Well, that was way easier than I thought it would be._

One by one, they all leave the room. Ino presses her hand to his shoulder on her way out, briefly – a _we're here for you, stupid_ kind of gesture, and he is grateful for it. The ANBU agents that had been posted outside the door step in to escort him, but Naruto is faster.

He pulls Sasuke to him with a kind of resigned desperation that catches him unprepared.

The Naruto he knows is optimism personified, made of light and fire and the obfuscating, infuriating stupidity characteristic to relentlessly hopeful people.

This Naruto is a seventeen year old child soldier with all the fight gone out of him, and that scares Sasuke more than he would ever care to admit.

"I'm sorry," he whispers into Sasuke's shoulder. "I'm so sorry."

There's a lot in that apology, much more than just what is being said. If Naruto could have it his way, there would be no sentence. If anything, it would be other people who would serve some time. But it is not his place to decide, not his place to speak up – it would do more harm than good, they both know, although he has a sneaking suspicion Naruto and Sakura both have already vouched for him. Kakashi, too.

He returns the embrace just as tightly.

"Don't worry about it too much," Sasuke says. "Your head might explode from the effort."

There is a moment of silence, and then there is a mutual snort of laughter.

Reluctantly, they pull apart. "Do me a favor?"

"Hm?"

"Try not to die," he says, and despite the joking tone, he means it. "And thank the Hyūga for me. Ino, too."

"That's three favors, you know. But okay, sure."

He allows himself a smile.

"Take care of yourself, you bastard," Naruto says. "I'll see you next spring."

"Yeah, you'll see me," Sasuke says, and before he can change his mind, he pokes his forehead, hoping the gesture will convey all the things he wants to say but doesn't know how; things like _I'm sorry_ and _Thank you_ and _I love you, you gigantic, bumbling, not-quite-idiot_.

Judging by his starstruck expression, Naruto understands.

* * *

Prison, he discovers, is a terribly dull affair.

He is only twenty days into his sentence, and already he can feel his sanity slipping away.

Being confined had been something he had expected; being alone throughout it, however, he had not. With Jūgo being given special conditions on account of his psychological instability, Suigetsu cutting a semi-suicidal deal, and Karin's thirty-day arrest sentence commuted to the ICU ward of Konoha General, all that he had left was a dank cell somewhere beneath the T&I headquarters. Normally, he would have been transferred to one of the various prisons spread throughout the Land of Fire, because Konoha's sole prison had been under the Uchiha Police Force's jurisdiction and when the Massacre happened there was no one left to run it, but Sasuke was not a normal man.

Plus, if he was transferred, there was a very good chance he would be lynched, even if they were to put him in solitary confinement.

There is not much one can do when stuck in perpetual semi-darkness other than dream and stare at the walls, and since Sasuke runs from sleep on principle (and also because he does not like what his dreams – nightmares – have to offer), the walls quickly become his insentient companions.

There are precisely fifty-four stains on the ceiling.

He knows this because he has made a habit out of counting them every night like clockwork with a dedication bordering on fervent, almost as if his very life is depending on the result of the count. He is not sure _why,_ exactly, he does it, nor does he care enough to ponder on it at length and find out.

He just does, in part to pass the time and in part because somehow he expects there to be a fifty-fifth at the next count – this, he concludes, is either a sign of his slow descent into madness, or just the general oppressive atmosphere of the cell getting to his head.

 _God, I'm going insane. Textbook insane. It's finally happening._

Half of him is waiting for something to jump out of the shadows, while the other holds an ear out for any odd creak. He has been expecting the piping to burst for quite some time now, for no other reason than the general _old_ look of everything.

 _Maybe that's why I keep looking out for that stain_ , he considers, before dismissing everything as entirely irrelevant and useless either way.

His hands itch from lack of something to do, and he rubs at left his arm absently, just above the elbow, careful not to touch the flesh on the inside of it where the department's on-staff nurse had strapped a cannula earlier that day.

Turning to lay on his side so he does not give in to the temptation to do a second counting, Sasuke is left without distractions, and so his thoughts catch up to him.

He thinks of Karin, whom he ran a sword through; she saved his life in return, and not just his. By restoring Tsunade's power, she might as well have saved the entire Allied Forces.

 _And now she's bedridden as thanks for her efforts,_ he thinks, and hates himself a little bit more than he did before.

Uchiha Sasuke knows no shortage of guilt, especially where it comes to his teams or his brother.

Then there is Suigetsu, asshole extraordinaire, confined in a lab of his own accord in exchange for his freedom at the end of it. Freedom for what is left of him when Konoha's Science Division is done experimenting, anyway.

Jūgo is the one he is worried most about, because there is no telling how he will react when overcome by one of his rages, but Sasuke reasons he is probably the safest out of them, considering the fact that he is alone in the middle of a forest with just wildlife for company.

Sasuke sighs from deep inside his chest, deflated.

 _If I keep worrying like this, I'm going to have wrinkles by the time I turn twenty._

The door at the end of the hall opens with a series of clanks. Familiar footsteps in pairs of two follow, their padding muffled by the floor. Before long, Ibiki's face comes into his line of sight, the petite nurse following suit.

"Time for your medicine, Uchiha."

He sits up on the bed without complaint. Ibiki unlocks the door, letting the woman pass through first before positioning himself at the entrance with his hands crossed over his chest.

Having your entire chakra network incapacitated requires close monitoring, apparently, and Tsunade had decided to keep his eyes under observation, too, just in case any abnormalities or problems appear further down the road."I'd rather have you in peak condition if I'm to have you at all," she'd said when he had given her an _are you kidding me_ look.

Sasuke had had the decency to refrain from any crass jokes. Outwardly.

The nurse ( _Aoi,_ he remembers, _her name is Aoi_ ) takes his vitals: body temperature, respiratory rate, heart rate, blood pressure, and then she makes him walk around. His gait is slightly awkward from so much sitting, and he can hear her _tch_ behind him.

"Stretching shouldn't be a problem," she says when he sits back down. "Don't let your muscles atrophy, Sasuke."

"Understood."

He does not tell her that he is sore because stretching is one of the few things he _can_ do around here, choosing instead to fold his hands in his lap when she starts to examine his eyes. This up close she is quite pretty, brown doe eyes framed by blue-black hair, and Sasuke has to wonder if perhaps he is getting lonely.

While he has never had any particular romantic interest in the females that wandered through his life, he is very much human and very much appreciative of pretty things.

 _Lonely's pushing it a little, though. I'm just...hypersensitive. Yeah._

"Alright, all's good so far. Your hand, please," Aoi says, and he extends his arm without question.

"You never really told me what's in this," he notes as she starts to inject him.

"Didn't I? Well, I apologize," she says, offering him a sheepish smile. "It's a mix of chemical compounds meant to suppress your body's production of chakra, and inhibit your nerves' response to stimuli. Having your network sealed off for so long becomes painful pretty quickly. Normally, we would also administer mild sedatives to keep the inmate nice and slow, but since you're not particularly troublesome, you're not getting those."

"Very considerate of you," Sasuke says, drily, but not entirely sarcastic.

Aoi grins. "This reminds me – Ibiki, we'll need to bring a medic to do a check-up. A Hyūga, ideally. If there are clots, they're too small for me to tell by hand, and by the time they'll grow big enough to notice they'll be a _bitch_ to deal with."

"I'll talk to Tsunade tomorrow morning."

"Alright. I'm done here," she says. Then, turning to him: "I'll see you tomorrow, Sasuke."

"Take care, ma'am."

"Aish, don't be so formal. You're making me feel old."

She leaves; Ibiki does not.

"Your friends are fine, in case you were wondering," he says, lingering in the doorway. "The girl's still in the hospital, but that's just because the Hokage wants to keep an eye on her. Also because she doesn't want her down here, but that's a different story. The other two didn't have any incidents thus far."

Sasuke's relief is almost tangible.

"I see. Thank you, sir."

The only response Sasuke gets is the loud clang of the door as it closes.

* * *

Time is a wound, and it has a bad habit of bleeding when you have nothing to fill it with. Thirteen days pass in a blur of thoughts too heavy and nights full of the same old nightmares.

Sometimes he can feel the ghost weight of Itachi's body hanging lifeless in his arms, too bony for a man his age and height. He was all corners, his brother – all sharp angles, save for the roundness of his heart and character. He misses him so dearly he can feel his heart break in his chest, and he has to remember how one goes about forcing air into the lungs with increasing frequency. Other times, he dreams of birds falling dead from the sky, black as coal with eyes as red as blood, and he wonders if somehow there is not more past to him than there is future.

Mostly, he eats the canteen food he is brought and asks for seconds; it never ceases to be surprisingly flavorful. After, he counts the stains on the ceiling, draws constellations with his mind's eye, and realizes how much he misses the open prairie.

The fifty-fifth stain still refuses to show itself, and Sasuke begins to give up on it.

"You have a visitor," Ibiki announces solemnly on the evening of his thirty-fourth day of confinement. He is carrying a pliable chair one hand.

Over his shoulder, Sasuke sees the top of a very familiar head.

His knees grow weak, a curious mix of equal parts sorrow and alleviation that settles in the joints, and Sasuke fleetingly thinks, _Pain has always had a way of making_ _a_ _home inside_ _of_ _us, hasn't it?_ _In the wrists, in the tendons, in the sinew._ _It spreads like vines over old houses, eats at the paint and at the wood until there's nothing left beneath it._

A memory unravels and blooms melancholy pink within him at the thought of _house_ and _home_ , and it eases around him, gentle and soothing. For a solitary moment, the waters of a past that seems so distant now washes away all thoughts, and all of a sudden he is a child of five again, knotted in his mother's skirts as she is beating the mochi batter with a huff and a puff and a hey-harrumph. The New Year is just around the corner, and his mother is more beautiful than he had ever seen her, flour up to her elbows and on the tip of her nose, hair falling out of the bun she had put it in.

If he had known how things will end up, he would have enshrined more of his childhood. When you miss someone this deeply, memories are all the comfort you have, and his are few.

 _God,_ he thinks. _I'm tired. So very tired._

"Sasuke," Karin greets, small and so unlike her.

Ibiki folds out the chair for her, and she seats herself with a small nod of thanks. "I'll leave you two to talk," the man says, and he is gone from sight before Sasuke even has a chance to blink.

Silence hangs between them, heavy like a curtain made of velvet. Somehow, it is unexpectedly comfortable.

Sasuke sits down on the bed.

Neither of them really knows what to say, how to begin the conversation. They have so much to tell each other – Sasuke knows this, can feel it hum in his sternum, beat against the bone like a woodpecker gone mad. He sees it in her eyes, too, written in the clouds he finds gathered there, spilling like black paint on her cheeks and lower down the curve of her throat.

He does not remember ever seeing her this pale. In contrast to the vivid red of her hair, her skin is almost as white as paper.

You see, Sasuke has been thinking about this meeting for a while. Has been preparing for it, in fact; he had all his thoughts laid out in a neat, coherent composition, the questions he wanted answered laid at the very end – questions like _are you being treated well?_ and _what will you do now?_ and, perhaps the most important one, _why did you come back? why did you save our lives?_

But now that they are here, that she is in front of him, smaller than he remembers, frailer than she ought to be, in a skirt at least one size too big, everything is lost to the wind.

So he swallows the lump in his throat and asks, "Are you well?" because there is nothing else that he can think of, and nothing else more important or immediately pressing.

 _Of course she isn't,_ he thinks. _Just look at her, you fucking moron. She's exhausted. All the fight's gone out of her._

Karin looks at him for a long, long while before she answers. She drinks in his weight loss, the haggard lines insomnia has drawn under his eyes, the blue-and-white prisoner's clothes. He can tell that she wants to run her hands over his face and kiss his wounds, the ones that run deeper than flesh and bone, until they are gone and he is free of pain, even the ghost ache. Even after all he has done to her, she still loves him with the same manic desperation she has been loving him with for five long years.

She would give him her life, if he would ask for it.

In many ways, she already has.

He has never felt so miserable, so utterly and completely ashamed, in his entire life.

Sasuke looks at her and thinks: _fool_ and hates himself so much he can _taste_ it.

"I've been better," she admits, looking away from his eyes. He watches her fiddle with the hem of her shirt and thinks, _you're a fool, and I'm an even bigger one_. He has to suppress the urge to press his hands on top of hers and still them. "And you?"

"I've been better," he echoes, and rubs absently at his arm. It has become a habit.

She nods slowly, having expected this answer. "I went to see Jūgo and Suigetsu before I came here. Jūgo's fine, mostly. A little afraid he'll have a fit while still on probation, but he's treated well. As for Suigetsu – well. He was _glad_ to see _me_."

"Ah."

Sasuke winces. If Suigetsu was visibly relieved to see her, then he was not doing too well.

"As for me, I've got a job," she says, and laughs, almost as if she herself cannot quite believe it. "Didn't see that coming, did you? Neither did I. But I've got one, alright, and another pending offer to go with it."

He is surprised, pleasantly so. "From who?"

"Hyūga Hinata," Karin says, a little smile fluttering on her lips. It is the most genuine expression he has seen today on her face, and he finds himself smiling back against his will. "She wants me to help her find a way to undo the clan's Cursed Seal, but I'm not sure I can. I've told her as much, but she insisted. I wonder if Naruto talked her into it."

"I doubt that," he says. "That girl is pretty selfless, but Naruto wouldn't take advantage of her. I don't think he even realizes she's into him, anyway."

"They'd be funny together," Karin says, and laughs at the thought. "He's an idiot only when it's convenient, but also terribly clueless, and there's a lot more to her than kindness. Anyway – she gave me access to their archives. God, Sasuke. They're _enormous_."

"Hn."

"And if what I find there isn't enough, she will send me to Uzushio. I have a sneaking suspicion she'll send me there even if there's no need, actually. She's...really nice."

"Warm chakra?"

"Mhm. Very much so."

Sasuke's lips twitch. "And the pending offer?"

"Ah, that one's from Ibiki. He wants me to join the T&I. And I think I'll take him up on it, eventually."

"Do you plan to stay in Konoha?"

It is Karin's turn to be surprised. "Don't _you_?"

"I do, but..."

"There you have it," she says with a shrug. "We go where you go, Sasuke."

"You don't owe me anything, Karin. None of you."

"We're well aware. But as insane as this might sound to you, we happen to care about you. Plus, it's not like we have anywhere else to go – as far as Taka is concerned, Sasuke, you're home."

To say he is caught off-guard would be a major understatement.

Karin smiles.

"You heard me, stupid. You're _home_. We're only going to go away if that's what you'll want."

"Never," he says, with such conviction that he startles himself.

Her smile grows. _I'm sorry_ , Sasuke wants to say. _I'm so, so, so sorry._ _I'm sorry for – fuck, I don't even know. For making you love me._ He wants to take her by the shoulders and shake her; ask, _what do you even see in me? Which part of me makes all the shit you have to put up with worthwhile?_

But he is merely a man, and so he is greedy; and if love, the thing he is most starved of, is freely given, then he will take it with both hands without hesitation.

He sighs, resigning himself to the inevitable. If his life has taught him anything, then that something is that you never really stop loving the people you care about. He will apologize to Karin in due time, and he will do so with actions rather than words. Those always speak more, cry loud and raw and for all the world to hear, and Sasuke has always been prone to drama. Part of being an Uchiha, he supposes. Everyone in his family is a Big Damn Something.

For now, though –

"Karin."

"Hm?"

He takes her hands in his, and brings them to his lips. "Thank you."

* * *

His nightmares become less frequent; he has almost forgotten the way burnt corpses smell, how red his mother's blood was on his brother's hands, those bony, frail yet steady hands.

When he does sleep, he dreams instead; cryptic dreams, akin to the flower of a lotus, layers folding in on the ones underneath them. Often, he dreams of a field filled with flowers, pure white lilies under a gentle sunrise sky. Sometimes the field is full of roses instead, red as blood and wilting, where each petal is a drop in an ocean of sorrow. Those are dreams of a much sadder nature. In all of them, he finds Itachi standing there, twirling a stem between his fingers with a thoughtful expression.

"I worry about you, Sasuke," dream-Itachi says when he spots him. "I worry for you so."

"Why, Brother?"

"Because you do not know what to do with your hands," dream-Itachi says. He seems so saddened by the notion. Mournful, almost. "There was no one to teach you, so you do not know what to do with your hands unless there is a blade between your fingers. You need to love, Sasuke, and you do not know how. And it's my fault. My _sin_."

 _It's not true,_ Sasuke wants to say but can't; he chokes on the words and his brother is gone before he can find them again.

He wakes in cold sweat, hands outstretched, and cries himself back to sleep. What follows is usually white noise, though sometimes there are memories instead, and the tears he wakes up with are of a different sort. There is ghost ache in every fiber of his body, but he can still feel Mikoto's warm hands combing through his hair for hours afterward, and in a strange way, he is thankful for it. He misses his family something fierce, particularly Itachi, but he has been learning how to cope with it.

Naruto and Sakura both take the time to visit him when they can; he is told of how the world is outside the prison walls, same old mess with even more bureaucracy, and Naruto's frustration with paperwork is almost enough to dissuade the man from one day taking up the mantle and title of Hokage.

Almost.

 _He never knew what "giving up" means. By now, he's too old to learn_ , he thinks, and smiles, fond despite himself.

"Oh, right," Sakura says. "Ino will soon be joining the T&I, and while she will have her hands full with work, she said she'll take the time to come by when it's possible."

"That's...very nice of her."

"Don't worry, she doesn't have ulterior motives," she says, and laughs. "...I think."

"Letting her take advantage of a defenseless inmate. How cruel of you, Sakura."

"Aw, don't be like that."

Ino does indeed visit, and to her credit, she is actually nicer than any of them had anticipated. She even brings him tomatoes.

"Who told you?" he asks, and is met with a shrug.

"I used to be your fangirl, you know. The least I could do was know your preferences."

"Ah."

He had almost forgotten that tidbit. She is very far removed from what he remembers, while also somehow being intrinsically the same, and Sasuke finds himself wondering if people are actually capable of change.

 _On a purely external level, they are,_ the voice inside his head he has dubbed his "Inner Itachi" says with an intonation that makes him think of metronomes and clocks that swing from heavy chains in the belly of the sky. A downside of the Sharingan, that; or perhaps a faulty, overly-vivid imagination. He always thinks in rich, surreal imagery. _One's essence never changes, though,_ Inner Itachi adds, almost as if talking to himself.

Somehow, that is a relief.

 _Maybe there is good left in me somewhere, after all._

Things are getting better. Slowly, bit by bit, Uchiha Sasuke is learning to adjust and adapt to his new life.

…

He breathes in through the nose. As of today, May 18th, he is a free man.

And if he were to be honest, this scares him _shitless_.

Ibiki offers him a jacket, and he shrugs into it with unsettling relief. _If only it'd be big enough for me to hide in it,_ he thinks, and chews at his lip.

"Take care of yourself, kid," Ibiki says in that strict parent voice Sasuke has come to realize the man uses exceedingly often, particularly with his staff. "Do whatever, but make sure you don't end up back here. Six months with you on deck was more than enough."

This last part is accompanied by a wrinkle of his nose that borders on dramatic sniffle, and Sasuke has to smother a snort that is still in its' cradle.

"I won't. I don't like you any more than you like me, old man."

"Fuck off."

Behind them, Ino laughs. "What are you, five?" she asks, not quite a question, and shakes her head. "Ridiculous."

There is a touch of fond in that. She hands him a case with his very few possessions: a change of clothes and various documents, from his shiny new ID to the ownership rights of the Uchiha estate and its' fortune.

"Do you want me to go with you?"

Last he saw a clock, it displayed seven thirty-four. He has an appointment with the Hokage at ten. _Plenty of time,_ he thinks, tries to ignore how loud his heart is pounding against the walls of his chest.

"No," he says. "But thank you."

Ino offers a smile. He does not need to voice his thoughts for them to know where he is headed.

"Alright," she says, still smiling. "Take care, Sasuke. I'll see you around later."

"Hn."

He walks away, a hand raised up in a wave. He does not look back.

Konoha is exactly as he remembers it, brick and wood and hard pavement, the smell of food and the laughter that float in the air an open invitation. _This village is frozen in time,_ he thinks. _Destroyed and rebuilt, rebuilt and destroyed,_ _again and again like a record stuck in the player._ _It stands the same as it did in my father's time and his father's before that,_ _dating all the way back to the time when it was built._ _I guess_ _some_ _things_ _never really_ _change,_ _indeed_ _._

Not that this is necessarily a bad thing – like the old sweater you wear every winter, there is a very specific comfort to it. The knowledge that no matter where life takes you, you can always go back to this one thing and find it unchanged. It is something to hold on to, an anchor to get you through the storm.

His feet still know the roads, and they take him home of their own accord.

 _Home, huh_.

How foreign that word sounds on his tongue, how awkward it hangs in his mouth. But he is home, alright – he is home and he is walking the same roads he walked once upon a dream when he was still a child and did not know how blood feels like, did not know how it tastes when you lick it off the back of your teeth. He is walking _home_ , and he is surrounded by the same people he has known all his life; they look at him with strange eyes, some with malice, most with curiosity, and he pays no heed to their whispers.

Uchiha Sasuke has been gone from home for five long years, and nothing has changed.

 _This all feels so surreal,_ he finds himself thinking, almost voicing it. _It feels as if these aren't really my legs I'm walking on. As if this will all dissipate if I breathe, turn to smoke and wither around me._

Next thing he knows, he is standing before the gates of the Compound, and a heavy chain full of rust that is kept in place by an ancient-looking lock is the only thing that separates him from his past.

He takes a moment to contemplate the scene: the buildings that were left to ruin, unlived and overgrown with moss and vines, half-collapsed under their own weight, and the wide, long unpaved road that splits them down at the middle.

He wonders: How many times has he walked that road? How many times had his mother greeted him with a smile at the end of it? How many times had he and Itachi ran it? Sasuke does not know. He bends down, careful not to disturb the chain, and steps inside.

The Uchiha Compound is a battlefield, each of the house a bone that makes up an ancient monster's skeleton.

It takes him all his willpower just to keep his knees from buckling.

A lump forms at the back of his tongue.

"I'm home," he says, voice merely a whisper. Whom exactly is he greeting, he does not know. Maybe it is the land, or maybe the empty houses that rise from it, pale bruises on the face of the earth. Maybe it is the ghosts that lingered in the aftermath of that terrible night, who now are breathing in the decay of their own blood as it turns to rot on the walls of what were once their homes. Maybe it is all of it or none at all. Sasuke does not know this either, and he does not ponder. Thinking about it hurts too much.

 _This is a graveyard,_ he thinks. _The cradle and coffin of everything I've ever loved. The cradle and coffin of everything I've ever been._

He walks on unsteady legs.

At every corner, there is a memory:

Itachi's shoulders, that looked so titanic beneath his tiny fists when his brother carried him on his back – Mikoto used to tell them stories when they were little, myths indigenous and foreign alike. Among them there was that of a man whom had been punished by the gods to carry the world on his shoulders. Later, Sasuke will think back and realize just how well that fit his brother, and the smile on his lips will taste bitter.

He remembers his mother's heartbeat, the way he could hear it hum in her throat when she gathered him in her arms and tucked him under her chin; all these years, and he remembers every beat, every pulse, every whisper of it.

On and on, every inch of it is laden with memories; here, the senbei shop where Uruchi'd always give him a little extra. There, the bakery where his mother bought pastries with zenzai and chocolate fillings. Across the street from it, the cafe where Itachi would splurge on dango when his day had been worse than usual, and Shisui would reach for his wallet and pay the bill without saying a single word. Ahead and to the right, the mini-market where Mikoto bought vegetables from, always at a discount because the vendor had known her since she was a mere child. The tomatoes were especially delicious, and when she had asked about the seeds, he had given her a bag of them with a knowing smile. Up to her death, she had kept a patch of them in the backyard, and Sasuke vividly remembers days where he had done nothing but stare at them as they grew, completely entranced. To him it looked like magic, and he had spent entire months looking for fairies he thought had hidden in their garden.

Everything had been fascinating when he had been five and the sun still felt warm on his skin.

Twelve years and far too many scars later, he is longing for what is lost so badly his body is shaking with it, airways closing off, brain no longer entirely capable of distinguishing real from illusory. Suddenly grief is very much a tangible thing, and it is choking the life right out of his lungs.

At the center of the Compound, a monument has been recently erected to commemorate the Massacre, marble carved with care and finished off with coats of lacquered enamel. Sasuke all but collapses in front of it, unable to hold himself together any longer.

He runs his fingers over the names inscribed on the column, remembers the face that belonged to each and every one of them. He allows himself to remember; the district is once more filled with people, alive through the prism of his memory, and Sasuke lets his heart mourn his losses.

 _Tears are not weakness,_ his mother had told him. _Tears are a very brave thing, Sasu-chan. It takes courage to show the world your heart._

He presses his lips to her name last, mouth fervent on the cold stone. "I'm home, mother," he says, and tastes the salt of his sorrow as it burns down his face. "I'm home."

Overhead, storm clouds gather.

Time loses all meaning; Sasuke does not know for how long he has been kneeling, but when he rises, he has regained some of his composure. His field of vision is blurry with tears, and he lets them flow freely.

The next stop is the graveyard at the very back of the Compound.

Here, in the seclusion such a space offers, another monument had been placed directly at the entrance; one that commemorates Itachi and Shisui, the heroes of whom no one will sing. This one had been Naruto's proposal, backed up by everyone who knew the truth behind the Massacre. The public will still be kept in the dark about the truth in accordance to his brother's wish, but there will not be a single shinobi nor Uchiha that will not know their names and their sacrifice.

It was a touching gesture, doubly so since Itachi did not have a proper grave.

His ears are ringing.

This one is white instead of black and considerably smaller. The names were written on titan plaques instead of being carved directly into the stone, a crow in flight the only mar on the smooth surface of the stone. He has to smile at that – it is such a personal touch, and he wonders whose idea had it been. Somehow he doubts Naruto's ability for subtleties, but at the same time he would find it unsurprising.

A woman is kneeling by the foot of it.

Sasuke sees the white dress pooling around her bent knees and the curtain of black hair draped over her back and thinks, _Mother?_

But she is not; Mikoto's ghost is not back from the Great Beyond. Had his eyes been less blurry from the tears, he would have noticed the color of her hair is not the right one – this here is distinctly more blue than his mother's had been, and shinier by far. When she turns around to face him, the face is similar enough, but instead of obsidian eyes he finds himself staring into pale lavender ones.

"Sasuke?" the woman calls out, and the voice is wrong, too. His mother's voice had been soft and gentle, but this is softer still, more quiet somehow. "Sasuke? Are you alright?"

He blinks sluggishly, as if awoken from a dream.

Before him is Hyūga Hinata, sporting a wide-brimmed hat and gardening gloves. To her right there are three baskets full of greenery, neatly lined up, and the gears running in his head click into place all at once.

"I'm fine," he answers, almost reflexively. "Are you – are you _weeding_?"

She gives a sheepish smile. "Well, yes."

He stares at her stupidly, unsure of what to say.

"Are you _sure_ you are alright? You look a little pale, though I suppose that can be accounted for."

"I'm fine, really," he insists. "You startled me, that's all. I didn't expect to see anyone when I came here. Why – why are you weeding the graveyard?"

"Ah." Pause. "Well, this is awkward...You see, I've been looking after Konoha's abandoned graves for quite some time now, and I thought it'd be nice if I cleaned here too. I wanted to be done before you came by, truth be told...I knew it would be, um, weird if you found me here. I should have known you'd stop here before going to see Lady Tsunade. I apologize."

Sasuke hums. "You're an odd bird, Hyūga. Not that it's a bad thing."

"Eheheh..." Hinata gives a sheepish smile. "Would it be alright if I finished, though? I don't feel well leaving it like this."

He considers.

"Depends. Do you have a spare pair of gloves on you?"

* * *

In the weeks that follow, something peculiar happens: Uchiha Sasuke and Hyūga Hinata become friends. Karin had been right in her assessment – she is warm, and bright, and above all, kind. There is no trace of prejudice in her, no fiber of voluntary malice. Hyūga Hinata is someone who sees people as they are, not as the misconceptions that surround them or the pretenses they fabricate.

 _Well, she was the first person to see Naruto for what he is, so I suppose it's not really that surprising._

This is how he finds himself helping her clean the cemetery on Saturdays, and also how he finds himself getting blisters when she suggests he joins her and Ino in their gardening endeavors. This is a productive activity, at least; he had been considering getting a garden of his own for quite some time.

The renovation of his home is still in the works – Ino roped Shikamaru into helping with the architecture plans, but the actual construction will take time. Especially since Sasuke insists on doing it himself.

He rarely sleeps in his own bed; most of the time he falls asleep in the backyard of the old manor, lulled to slumber by the drift of the wind. He hears lullabies, sometimes, although he is not sure who sings them – his imagination, or perhaps the ghosts that clutter around him like a mantle. Those he can physically feel, cold yet not entirely unpleasant breaths on the back of his neck.

 _Or, maybe, just maybe, I'm being goddamn paranoid again. God, I need therapy._

He is uncertain of everything, these days. The only sureties in his life are the blisters on his hands and feet and the comfort he finds in the fact that he has, indeed, friends. Naruto is away on a diplomatic mission, but everyone else is happy to indulge him, and they even go as far as helping with the renovations. Jūgo actually fights his apprehension of social interaction for the express purpose of coming out to help him with the harder parts of manual labor, while Karin requests permission to see him whenever she can – which Hinata gladly gives.

This is how he finds himself in the middle of a barbecue, bantering over meat, and for the first time in a long while, Uchiha Sasuke has the power to smile.

* * *

 _fin._


End file.
